67 Design And Advertising Decisions That Can Only Be Described As Malicious And Manipulative (New Pics)

That said, companies finding ways to influence what people buy is nothing new. It goes back further than most people realize. Edward Bernays (1891–1995), an Austrian-American pioneer widely credited as the father of public relations, was already doing this back in the 1920s.

He’s largely the reason women started smoking publicly. Before that decade, it was considered socially unacceptable for women to smoke, which from a cigarette company’s perspective meant an entire half of the population was an untapped market.

So Bernays hired female models to march through the New York City Easter Parade while smoking, framing cigarettes as symbols of liberation and equality. He called them “torches of freedom.” It worked.

That was a hundred years ago, and just one of many campaigns he ran. The tactics have only gotten more sophisticated since then, with companies continuously finding new and smarter ways to influence people and sell as much as possible.

The most productive response to all of this is to simply educate ourselves on how these tactics work. The more people know they exist, the harder they are to fall for. And rather than just getting frustrated when we do spot them, calling them out actually matters.

Collective noise leads to real change, and dark patterns getting banned in parts of the world is proof of that. Hopefully, it won’t stop there.